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Pittsburgh Rapper Mac Miller Rising To Stardom

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – His music videos are being featured on MTV, Rolling Stone magazine has covered him and his iTunes popularity keeps growing.

Mac Miller, 19, graduated from Alderdice High School last year and is climbing the music charts.

Getting in the booth comes with ease to Miller.

Where he’s at today, is a future he only dreamed about a couple years ago when he was still in high school.

Now, fresh off a five-month tour, he’s working on his first official album.

Miller said he spent a good part of high school working on his music.

“My goal was to make music my job when I graduated high school. To make it something I could live off of,” Miller said.

Not even a month after graduating, Rostrum Records signed him. It’s the same label that signed Wiz Khalifa.

Miller will be the first to tell you that success wasn’t immediate.

“I’m blessed to be young and be so successful to this point, but I still feel like I put in a lot of work to get to where I’m at. I don’t feel like I just came in and said, ‘Oh I’m going to rap and put together a mixed tape and then all of sudden I have a million views on YouTube,” Miller said.

Eric Dan, a producer with ID Labs, said Miller worked for years in the studio in Lawrenceville before perfecting his sound.

The hard work is now paying off.

“He’s not out there trying to follow a trend. He’s not trying to sound like the guys who made a hit last week. He’s really just trying to do his own thing,” Dan said.

He’s getting national attention and growing his fan base. On Monday, Miller’s single, “Donald Trump,” climbed to the No. 12 rap single on iTunes.

On YouTube, that same song had over 10 million views. It seems Pittsburgh’s young Miller isn’t just knocking on fame’s door, he’s busting through it

“I have light-years to go and so much work to do. I will say that I’ve achieved some cool success and done some pretty cool things and I’m not going to act nonchalant about things that I’m proud of. But, there’s definitely a lot of work to do,” Miller said.